Ecliptica Read online

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  Drakes Dictionary

  Magical Language – A Guide to the ancient art

  Character Guide – the who’s who of the Realms

  ~ Prelude ~

  The Elves rushed towards the border. The Queen had sent members of her personal guard, along with several of her strongest spell-casters. They had been sent with the utmost haste to reach the border in time to meet with a piece of the Ecliptica. They were given no further instructions or details as to what to expect. Ever nearer to the edge of the great forest they came and then, when they were almost at the point where forest met with open grasslands, a great boom of magical energy reverberated throughout the land.

  The commotion up ahead spurred the Elves onward. The tree line that told all younger Elves to venture no further came into sight quickly, but it was already too late.

  In the clearing, two figures stood, staring at an empty space just before them. All around them, the world seemed somewhat distorted: drained of life. It was as though all that was good and vital had been disrupted by a dark magical force, the likes of which had not been seen for more than a thousand years.

  Silence reigned, creating an uneasy peace that even the wind dare not break. The Elves stood close by as one of the figures fell to their knees and uttered the only sound to break the silence.

  ‘No…’

  ~ 1 ~

  Drake ran. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, hoping his pursuer could not match his pace. Glancing at the blur of his feet, he almost ran straight into a market seller.

  “At last, some cover,” he thought.

  With a well-practiced grace, he slowed to a walk, dipped his head, and raised his hood.

  . . .

  Nethalie shot out of the alleyway straight into the bustling crowd.

  “In E’zara’s name!” she cursed aloud, turning the curious eye of many who surrounded her. She glanced around, how could she possibly find that street urchin in this crowd? Craning her neck she took three steps forward and, with an athletic grace, leapt onto the top of the nearest market stall. As she leapt, her hood fell back, revealing the delicate points of her Elven ears: her mother’s ears.

  Nethalie scoured the crowd for any sign of the young man she had chased from her father’s store. Not a hint of him; no dashing figure in the crowd or flustered stall owner. Not that the man really stood out…apart from those golden eyes.

  When he had entered the store, she had become fixed upon those golden eyes that seemed to flicker with a warm glow, as though the very embers of life burned in his eyes. She had quickly dipped her head so as not to stare, but watched him as he perused and thumbed the various items; his skillful fingers sliding a small silver puzzle piece into a pocket secreted in his sleeve. Nethalie smiled, admiring his nimble hands. The young man made his way to the door, his booted foot swinging to leave as she called after him, “shall we expect you to pay for that?”

  The young man tuned slowly. ‘He must be no older than me’, she thought to herself. Their gazes become locked in a challenging stare. Long seconds passed, the young man’s hand twitched, crash! Nethalie’s eyes were drawn away for all but a second, but when she looked back, the young man was gone.

  “Damn,” she whispered, leaping out into the street after him.

  Nethalie crouched on the warm roof watching the crowd below her, its movements like a stream meandering through the banks of stalls. A short while passed before Nethalie rose to her feet and sighed. In her haste to pursue the thief she had only time to secure one of the locks on the shop door. Her father would not be pleased when he found she had closed up shop in the day, even if it was to get back a stolen item. Would he notice she wondered to herself? He had been so absent of late. An item so small would likely go un-noticed for weeks. Even so, it was strange to steal such a seemingly valueless item given all the other valuables in the shop. The thought spurred her on and she hurried back through the alleyways to her home.

  The shop was quiet and empty when she returned. The hangings on the walls flapped softly in the warm afternoon breeze and the gentle creek of the wooden window shutters soothed Nethalie’s mind. She began wondering who the man had been and why he was interested in the puzzle piece. Her father traded in antiquities and oddities; half the things in the shop he knew nothing about and likely half of those were worthless as junk. ‘Mother would have known,’ Nethalie thought.

  Tre’larr, her father, had once been a great explorer of the five kingdoms. He was known through all of them, even to the elven Queen, Shan’eu. Nethalie’s mother was a historian and warrior who had met Tre’larr on one of his trips to the outer borderlands. Tre’larr and Luciar became friends whilst on the expedition and, although she maintained he was one of the strangest men she had ever met, had eventually fallen in love.

  Nethalie had been born to them four years later. Her childhood had been difficult being a half-elf, living in a world where such things were unusual. Life in Port Gol was much easier however, thanks to Kalisle. Nethalie had met him…well almost put an arrow through him whilst practising with her short bow, on the outskirts of the city. Three years before he had been poking his head around a tree he had caught her off guard and led to her shot being more than a little off. Kalisle was the first person her own age that had seemed interested in becoming her friend. After their peculiar start, the two quickly became strong friends. Nethalie found she split her day between minding the shop, reading through her mother’s tomes and spending her time with Kalisle. Nethalie was great at listening to the things he had to say, and he provided support in the shop when a customer became difficult. Kalisle was gentle at heart, but he looked quite imposing due to his greater than average height and strong build. The two friends enjoyed practising with the odd weapon or two. Where Nethalie was highly skilled with almost any type of bow, Kalisle was deadly accurate when throwing knives. The two tried at various points to teach the other their skill. No matter how many times they practised however, Kalisle could never quite master the bow. Though she would not admit to her great skill willingly, Kalisle was always in awe of how accurate Nethalie was, betting that she could catch the falling leaves with one of her well placed arrows.

  Kalisle was the only person in Port Gol she counted as a true friend and often she would find herself telling him all about the times when she and her father had lived with the Elves, in her mother’s home. She even told him about their brief time as a family when they had moved to Port Gol. This had been a short time as, when she was fourteen, her mother became ill with an unknown sickness and the three of them travelled back to her homeland in the hopes that the Elves could cure her. After many weeks of various healing remedies and hope, Luciar had passed away one night. Tre’larr had been devastated and disappeared for four days. Nethalie was left to be looked after by her grandmother. Upon his return, Tre’larr was different. He was quieter and more reserved, his bright and quirky nature all but gone and no-one knew why there was such a shift in his personality or what had happened to him. It was as though the grief an
d pain from Luciar’s death had been suppressed. After Luciar’s burial under the silver leaf tree, Tre’larr and Nethalie returned to Port Gol and the shop that they had once run as a family. Tre’larr returned to buying and selling various items he came across in the markets and Nethalie would help run things and do the day-to-day chores, alongside her own studies.

  Her daydream over, Nethalie looked at the trinkets and various knicks and knacks carefully displayed on the shelves around the store. The strange silver piece still bothered her. She was sure she had seen it before, perhaps in her mother’s notes. At that moment Tre’larr came through the door and broke her out of her reverie. She would have to wait until sorting through the new stock was done, then she would check her mother’s tomes in the evening in search of answers.

  . . .

  Drake sat with a small leather pouch balanced on his knee, the afternoon sun shining down onto his hooded face. Lifting the pouch, he began slowly tipping it from left to right as he reminisced about his journey so far and his first encounter with Zeek. Above the creaking of the fishing boats around him, a gentle metallic clinking came from the pouch. The sound was almost musical and brought a smile to his face. In the pouch, three small silver pieces rolled into one another. The pieces made up a larger whole, something greater than their parts. Each one was decorated with glyphs that, together, would create a unique pattern of text and imagery. Drake knew the legend and, unlike many others, knew the significance of what he had in his possession. There were a number of silver pieces scattered across the five kingdoms, all of them somehow pieces to something greater, or so the legend told. As he sat, Drake wondered to himself where he might resume his search for the next piece.

  . . .

  In the old days of the kingdoms, only three realms existed. The Elven kingdom of Re’ashar was the largest and the Elves were revered for their wisdom, knowledge and unrivalled understanding of the flow of magic. A majestic and kindly race, the Elves would often be involved in the ruling of their neighbouring kingdoms in some way.

  The Human kingdom of Kelsach bordered with Re’ashar. The youngling race was easily influenced and could often be led astray. Keen on their fascinations with stone and steel, the kingdom quickly grew and filled with castles and keeps. However, in their darker days, a handful of younglings experimented with dark magic. Some of these dark mages were expelled from the kingdom; others were killed for their practices.

  Finally there was the third kingdom, the realm known and feared by all: The Shadows. Very little was known about the race, or indeed races, that inhabited these strange lands. Those who were ever brave, or ever foolish enough, ventured into these lands hoping to discover a wealth of knowledge or earthly riches. The adventurers were never seen or heard from again. Perhaps a stray pony might return, stripped of saddle and packs.

  It was heard through rumours and whispers on the winds, that those in The Shadow Realm practiced the darkest of all magic and enslaved elves, humans and all manner of beasts. They would draw on the very essence of life to delve into dark magic and created vicious spells of unnatural desires.

  Stories such as these were told to scare the young at bedtime or entertain the elders around the embers of the evening fire. Most took these stories as a good scare and nothing more.

  Most do not remember what happened a thousand years ago, when there were only three kingdoms. One day, a deep red sky shone across the lands, many who saw it believed it to be a sign of good fortune. However, mere moments before the hour of midnight, an object appeared in the sky. High above the peak of the largest mountain in The Shadow Realm it soared, pulsating a glorious deep red. Moments later, with a sound heard across all the realms, it shattered into seven pieces. Each of these falling over great distances, far from one another.

  Any human who had seen this sight had dismissed it as yet another spell of dark magic, weaved by those that existed in The Shadows. The Elves however, knew that this event held a much greater significance than the ignorant youth of humankind believed. They knew what had transpired many centuries before and what was yet to come.

  As the years slipped by and generations came and passed, the sight became a story, the story passed into myth and the myth became forgotten by all but a handful of scholars.

  ~ 2 ~

  Drake, street thief, swift of hand and light on foot.

  Drake had grown up an orphan, abandoned by his parents when he was only six years old. Now, at nineteen, he was forced to steal, beg and live the life of a street thief just to get through each day. Growing up in the city of Picinto, he was constantly avoiding someone: the city guild leaders, the Blackbird (the city’s infamous guard) or even the simple market seller who recognized his face. On one such evasive occasion, Drake was evading, quite skilfully he might add, the Blackbird through the cities old catacombs…when the floor gave way.

  Drake fell through the darkness for what seemed like forever before he reached solid ground again. On his descent, he did his best to prepare himself for the landing. Years of scrabbling across rooftops avoiding the Blackbird, and, on many an early occasion in his youth, regularly falling off said rooves, Drake had learnt that the best way to survive a fall was to relax. Explain that to a common man and they would laugh and say, ‘it is best to brace yourself to avoid broken bones’, but experience had taught Drake otherwise.

  Opening his eyes, he found he was surprisingly still alive and could move. This was not the first time he had ever found himself in a precarious situation in the dark. He remembered the last time rather fondly: a tavern cellar for two days with only the local grog to drink. Climbing out of the rubble and looking around, a faint distant light above him told him he was a long way down; unsurprisingly no one was following him, since the only way would be to fall and hope for the best at the end. Drake took a deep breath and discovered the air was damp and old. He gathered his wit and set about looking for a way out, after all, he wasn’t looking for a new hideout and a damp tunnel was certainly not a long term solution. After several failed attempts to find a way back up, exploring seemed a much more sensible, and, honestly, the only option. The gloom was almost unbearably heavy, but as he made his way along the tunnel a faint light seemed to be growing from some distance ahead. Drake fumbled and stumbled his way along the slimy, wet floor until he reached a wall with a small crack in it. Drake could feel the draw of the air from the tunnel behind him. Pushing his eye to the opening, a vast chamber could be seen on the other side, filled with manuscripts, scrolls and pedestals as high as his head, each with a leather bound book on its highly-decorated top. Candelabras littered the walls, flickering flames dancing atop the large, thick candles. Maybe there was a way out on the other side? A room with lit candles however seemed to suggest that there was at least some presence; he decided however that the risk was worth taking, if only to negotiate a way out. Taking out his knife from its concealed sheath on his lower leg, he began to scrape around the blocks that built up the wall. It paid, hopefully, to be prepared for tricky situations and Drake had several tools hidden about his person.

  After an hour of cursing, cuts and scrapes, Drake managed to get a block loose. Pushing and shoving with all his strength, he managed to force it into the chamber and squeeze through after it, not eating as often as the wealthy families of Picinto was paying off for once. Once through, he took a look around at the chamber. It appeared to be well maintained, but what was strange was the lack of an entrance to the chamber, how do the candles get changed he wondered. He had skirted the room, but found no hints of a door, or even a draft from behind the walls. ‘Damn, not what I was hoping for,’ he thought as he began another sweep, just in case he had missed something. Finding hiding places away from the rougher gangs of Picinto had taught him to look for loose floor boards and gaps in the walls. On one or two occasions this had paid off, finding a stash of belongings from thieves long since arrested or dead. He was having no such luck this time however, nothing of value appeared that might offer him a trade for a hot
bath and a room for the night. After a thorough investigation of the chamber, Drake chalked the contents up as “worthless scrolls,” kicking a pedestal in frustration.

  A deep groaning sound suddenly emanated from the ground beneath him.

  “Not again..,” he sighed and readied himself for another fall through the floor. His gaze was suddenly drawn up as all the pedestals began rotating down into the floor. In the centre of the room, where there once had been a bare and dusty floor, glowing glyphs became visible. Glyphs he did not recognize, could not decipher, and quite frankly looked like the scribbling of a small child. A central smooth column began to rise out of the floor amongst the other pedestals, which were now almost completely below the floor. A click followed by silence seemed to suggest it was all over. Standing motionless, Drake surveyed the room looking for any other changes that might hint at a booby trap. A couple of minutes passed before Drake crept cautiously towards the new column and reached out a hand to run down the smooth side. As his fingers touched the stone, a crack appeared and a golden light bathed Drake’s face. He tried to remove his hand and back away, but found he could not; again and again he tried as the light grew in intensity. He had become frozen in place, no matter how hard he tried, he could not move his hand away from the column. The cool smooth stone seemed to tingle beneath his fingers. “There’s always something else..,” he muttered as he tried to twist away, but his body refused to do as it was told.

  “Greetings to you Drake,” said a voice from nowhere and everywhere. “I have been waiting for you for a very long time.”

  “Who are you…where…are you?” Drake asked, his hand still fixed upon the column as his gaze darted around the room searching for the source of the voice, yet he stood as the solitary figure in the chamber.

  “My name is Zeek. I was once the Lord of the Dragons, until the leader of The Shadow Realm imprisoned me and the rest of my kind. We were used for our connection to magic, along with our ability to channel vast amounts of magic. All this they did, to feed their magical experimentation”. Drake could hear the pain, almost feel the same heartache, as Zeek spoke; it was a though he was feeling the sting of his abandonment all over again, only the grief was a hundred times worse. The few memories of his parents he remembered flashed through his mind, but littered with sights of dragons of all shapes and colours. He shook his head trying to clear it, but it was as if the emotion from this other mind was leaking through the stone and into him. Memories were blending, Drake could feel the thrill of experiences he had never had, of flying through pure white clouds and the heat of the sun. As the presence lifted from him, these other memories faded and his own returned to dominance.